The Porcelain Sky
by IheartTwilight
Summary: [Blue Haven sequel] Struck with amnesia, Bella finds that the road to remembrance is not easy, and that those closest to her have secrets. But if she ever wants to see Edward again, she’ll have to first realize the truth: You can never escape your past.
1. Waking Up Again

**Prologue**

_Waking Up Again_

"Shh!"

"She's waking up!"

"Can she hear us?!"

"_Yes_," I muttered sleepily, not having a clue who I was talking to.

Then I realized I was _waking up_. Something that should've been impossible.

I sat up with my back completely straight, my eyes wide. My skin was still unnaturally pale and tough and my senses were still heightened. But then,_ why did I feel so human_?

"What's going on? Who are you?" I demanded, standing up, baring fists, and glaring at the three people who had been surrounding my bed. We were in an RV, I noted, and someone had to be driving.

"Just calm down," said a guy, another vampire, with extremely light blonde hair. "We'll explain everything."

"Says who," demands another guy, glaring at the first.

"Says me-"

"Guys, calm down," a female interrupts. Then she turned to me. "My name is Indrani. We – we mean no harm to you, but really, as for the 'what's going on part', we don't quite know, either..." Then she gave me a strange look.

Through my confusion I was able to tell that she had long dark chestnut hair and a startling shade of eyes – some kind of hybrid mix between gold and crimson so that the end result was a very pale shade of topaz. Her irises looked a steely light blue, on the verge of white. I noticed that all of the other vampire's did, too.

"I apologize if we, uh, came off hostile in any way. I'm Winston, but you can call me Win," continued the lightheaded male vampire, before giving me a playful smirk.

Indrani and Win both gave the other dark headed one dirty looks. He sighed, but added his own bit.

"I'm Ayden. You'll have to excuse my hostility – I don't take kindly to strangers." The look he gave me was stronger proof than any other thing could've been. His attitude got me angry.

"Well then, I'm afraid you'll have to excuse any attitude _I_ might have. Sorry, but I don't ever recall _asking_ to wake up in some random vampire's RV," I snapped.

"Excused," he countered, smiling sharply.

While the other two gave Ayden angry looks, I turned around to map out my surroundings. It was then that I accidentally caught sight of my reflection. I gasped, walking closer to the little mirror on the wall. There, in plain view next to my right eye, was a short, pink, crescent shaped scar, not unlike the one on my wrist. I felt it curiously, and shrieked when I realized it was slightly hot. It was body temperature.

"What is this?" I questioned in dismay, turning around to them in utter confusion and cutting off their silent bickering. "What has happened to me?"

"We don't know," whispered Indrani, her eyes widening in fear and slight recognition at my little scar.

"We found you alone on the ground, surrounded by a bunch of broken trees," added Win, also staring. "Like a bomb went off."

"Like someone left you there to die," hissed Ayden.

And then it all flooded back to me in one big tidal wave of emotions – Edward being restrained, Zana, Micah, Diem dying, and Giovanni. My body convulsed without my consent at the memories. I fell back on top of the bed, putting my head into my hands. I remembered being carried off in my mock attempt at selflessness. I remembered seeing Edward's face as we screamed for each other. I remembered acutely the feeling of wanting nothing more than to die.

"And no one was around me?" I whispered, still recalling the awful day. How long had I been blacked out?

"No."

As hard as I tried, I couldn't make myself believe it. Edward would _never_ just leave me. He would've fought free and run after me. Unless he was- With a strangled sob, I stopped myself from thinking that. _No_. I would know if he had died.

"Can we turn around then? You can just drop me off – we can't be far from Seattle-" I started reasoning pathetically, but their incredulous looks cut me off.

"What?" I asked in fear.

"Honey," said Indrani, and her tone made me gulp. "You've been out for weeks now. We had to force feed you blood. Right now, I think we're in Nunavut."

"As in _Canada_?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

They nodded at me slowly, and suddenly my world went black.

Yet again.

Though this time my unconscious wasn't empty. My head was swarming with the sound of screams, the smell of death, and the feeling of a thousand different emotions spun up into a hurricane, all come up to eat me alive...


	2. Nightmares in the Moonlight

Chapter One

_Nightmares in the Moonlight_

"Urgh."

"Any good dreams?" Win asked me conversationally as I slowly rise up from my perch on the bed. There was a noticeably less amount of light coming in through the tinted RV windows, so I knew I had been sleeping a while.

"Not really," I replied groggily. "Need I ask how this is possible?"

Win just shrugged in response. "We don't know if you don't know."

"Trip thinks that maybe you've put so much energy into forgetting something, that whenever you come close to remembering it, you completely wipe out," added Indrani, coming out of a room in the back to sit next to Win on the couch by the little bed I was on.

"Trip?" I asked curiously.

"The wayward driver of our humble abode. Also, a complete brain," explained Win, rolling his eyes for affect.

"Ah."

"So, _is_ there anything you can't remember?" pressed Indrani suddenly, her silvery eyes wide and eager.

For some reason, I didn't want to tell them the truth. I hadn't quite trusted them yet, even though they had practically saved my life by hunting and feeding me blood. There was something about the idea of them knowing just as much, if not more, about me as I did. It was wrong.

"Besides how I got where I woke up, nothing," I lied.

Indrani and Win, who had both looked anticipated, slouched back down, disappointed.

"Maybe you're just a special case," Win said, shrugging and flipping on a small TV.

After several moments of silence and weather channel, Indrani spun on me suddenly.

"How _did_ you get there?" she wanted to know.

I looked down, trying to fight back the memories.

"It's a… _touchy_ subject."

"Ah…"

"Also pressing, apparently. If that's why you wanted to get back to Washington so fast," Win said nonchalantly. I remembered suddenly why I had passed out in the first place – we were in_ Canada_.

"Oh my God!" I hissed, making Indrani and Win jump. "I have to speak to the driver of the RV, Trip or whatever. Now."

They both looked at me like that weren't a good idea, but I stood up and walked to the door at the end of the room anyway. The RV was split into three sections by thin walls: the very back, which was a bedroom; the middle, where I was then, which was just a little living room; and the main part, a little dining room and kitchenette which also housed the steering wheel and the door in and out. I knew this from experience – I had been on an RV similar to that one before.

I stopped before going into the next room. "These walls are thin… Can they hear us?"

"Soundproofed," answered Win quickly. I don't ask why.

When I busted into the front room, the two vampires occupying it eyed me warily. Ayden was sitting at the little dining room table booth with a map spread out before him. The driver, Trip apparently, had his eyes on me through the (rather useless) rear view mirror.

"Hello, stranger," he smiled warmly at me.

I did not bother returning hospitalities.

"You need to stop the RV," I demanded.

Win and Indrani, who had rushed in after me, both seemed to be sending Trip messages through their minds.

"If I could just borrow a map, I could run off and be fine-"

"No can do," Trip interrupted me.

"_Excuse_ me?"

"Sorry, Stranger, but I can't stop this vehicle."

"Well then I'll just jump off," I hissed, full of adrenaline. I positioned my legs as if to do just that, but suddenly Ayden was in front of me.

"This is no way to treat those who have taken you in so hospitably," he said in mock sweetness.

I snarled at him. "Get out of my way or I swear I will rip you to-"

"You bear the obvious marks of someone who has been victimized by Giovanni. It is because of this that I suggested taking care of you. Don't make any mistake in thinking I would do this to any vampire." Trip interrupted me with this little blurb. My eyes darted to his, still staring at mine from the mirror, in shock. He continued smoothly. "You're _condition-_" I made a face "has led me to believe that neither of you were exactly allies. In this, I will take the stance of '_The enemy of my enemy is my friend_'. That makes you and me friends, Stranger. And I take care of my friends."

"You know who Giovanni is?" And even better, I thought, he was Giovanni's enemy!

"Yes. Him and I have some – _history_."

"And what are these signs that you think I have?" I had way too many questions to ask at once.

"Well, for starters, I've never in all my years met a vampire with such a perchance for sleep. That to me shows some kind of emotional unbalance of paranormal standards – something happened in that forest, Stranger, something horrid. Lucky for you, you got away with only a fractured memory and a scar. Not many other vampires who face Giovanni's skill have gotten away quite so unscathed."

"I wouldn't quite call it unscathed," I hissed, thinking of Edward with a pang. My need to escape had vanished as quickly as it had come – maybe these odd vampires could be my key to getting back to Edward. Just maybe…

"Say what you want, but you were lucky. My friends and I are in Canada now for some business, but I think together, us and you, we could get you your memory back."

"Who says I lost my memory? And what _kind_ of business?"

"Are you trying to tell me that you can remember what exactly happed in that field?" He smiled devilishly when I didn't respond. "And I think it's time you answered one of my questions."

I pinched my lips, nodding slightly.

"What is your name?" Trip asked me with a strange gleam in his eyes.

"Isabella," I said softly, hoarsely. I felt perilously close to blacking out again.

Trip laughed softly.

"I liked Stranger better."

And suddenly I lost my battle with weakness, and before I knew it, I was on the ground, crumpled, having nightmares yet again.

---

When I woke up some time later, it was to find all the lamps out and night drifting through the windows. It would have been impossible to move throughout the RV, in all its darkness and silence, had I not been a vampire. Through the window above my head, I could just slightly hear a scream from outside.

I got to my feet quickly, realizing at the same time that I had been moved to the living room section. Crouched down, I stalked to the door and opened it slightly. The screams were slightly louder, but the front was just as empty as the middle had been.

Slowly I moved into the kitchenette, then past the dining table, and finally to the front by the dashboard. Trip's usual seat behind the steering wheel was vacant. I turned my head to the right and saw, down the minor staircase of only four or five steps, that the RV door was slightly ajar. It was similar to those on school buses, only with no windows. The moonlight drifting through the crack was my only guidance.

I went down the stairs, one by one, until I reached the door. I was unreasonably scared – I was not a human. I shouldn't have been afraid of death.

After crouching uncomfortably on my feet for several moments, trying pathetically to gather up courage, did I realize that the many screams were not human. They sounded like animals being tortured. It didn't sound like the others were hunting, though. Or at least not food.

Finally I peaked my eye through the small crack – and had to restrain a scream immediately. A huge, nonvampire or human body was thrown up against the door, splattering foul smelling blood directly on my face.

"Are you done playing already?" hissed a voice, dangerously close.

I scuttled up the small staircase back into darkness, recognizing the voice as Trip's. Only it didn't sound human, or vampire. It sounded like pure monster.

The carcass of whatever was pulled away from the door, only now, the opening was slightly larger.

Through it I could see a living nightmare – Indrani, Win, Ayden, and Trip all running at super speed around a lit fire, chasing things through the woods. They were laughing like maniacs, like killers.

At first I couldn't see what they were hunting, but when I did, I felt like screaming. Not in rage, but in such a strong despair that I thought if I did scream, I'd create a gust of wing strong enough to blow away part of North America.

The image that I saw, I knew instinctively would haunt my dreams forever.

There, finally having caught her prey by the fire, was Indrani, pinning the beast down and laughing like a demon. Under her hands, squirming and screaming a half human, half wolf sob, was a werewolf.

Indrani's muscles, I noted for the first time, were unnaturally huge, dwarfing those of even Emmett. Her weird steely eyes now glowed a bright, horrid white, the blood of her catch running through her veins.

The wolf yelped one more time before she broke its neck. Slowly it turned back into a human. It was a kid, only around fifteen or sixteen, bleeding, dead, and unclothed. Indrani laughed once more before bending down to drink the kid's blood.

Suddenly I knew why their eyes were so weird – they feed off werewolf blood, different from that of human's.

With a sick, horrified feeling in my gut, I did the only thing I could think of – I crawled back to my bed and curled up in it, not bothering to wipe the blood off my face.

I was, I realized, living with monsters yet again. _Only this time_, I thought, _I would escape_.


	3. Running At Its Finest

Chapter Two

_Running at its Finest_

I wiped the blood of my face with the white sheets on my bed before leaving. That was my goodbye for them. That was all they deserved.

I snuck into the back room and sliced the window screen with my nail. I snuck out and started running as fast and as far as I could.

I ran through rain, shine, forests, fields, roads, and meadows. I didn't stop, but I remembered. Or at least I tried.

I remembered Charlie dying, and feeling as if misfortune was my shadow. I remembered the stupid decision of thinking that by turning myself in, my troubles would leave others alone. In hindsight, I don't know _how_ I could've ever believed Edward would just let me die.

Death was a hard thought, though. I often remembered Zana… Diem… Micah. I remembered how cruelly they were murdered. I remembered being carried away, and Giovanni, using my weakness and self-denial to torment me. It dawned on me sometime later that I wasn't immune to Giovanni's powers – his gift was already inside everyone he attacked. By manipulating emotions inside of people, he was unstoppable.

More prominently, I remembered how Damien was behind everything. He had been stalking me for years, only now I realized that running wouldn't stop him. Only I could.

With a pang, I remembered Riley – a vampire who I had considered a friend, only to soon be betrayed by.

I remembered Jacob, slightly aged but still just as dedicated, and I remembered the base that had been home for me, and how everyone there had been murdered on my behalf.

So sometime on my fourth day of running, when an all-too familiar figure appeared before me in the overgrown woods off a highway, I thought I was being delusional. But no, it was real. There, standing before my eyes and dressed in purple, was Lillian. The sole survivor of the base, and the vampire who had been once a friend of Edward's. Maybe more.

"W-_what_?" I gasped.

"Close your mouth. You're attracting gnats," she demanded, her girly voice harsher than I remembered. She looked incredibly feral.

"What _happened_ to you?" Was the first thing I had thought of to say.

She looked offended. Great.

"Well, let's see here," she held up a finger. "For one, I survived a _mass _murder. Two, I've been working all _freaking_ day. And three, I really can't stand you. So let's go, alright?"

"Excuse me? Go where? _And what did I do to you_?"

She rolled her eyes and started tapping her foot on the forest bracken.

"I'll explain it at the base."

"Another base? Have you not learned your lesson? Count me out!" I said, raising my hands and walking backwards.

"Bella, be reasonable. Don't you want to save Edward?" Her eyes looked tormented now, but at the same time, they were full of pleasure. Like a beaten prisoner when he sees he has another cellmate.

My resolve hardened.

"Fine."

Lillian explained to me the basics while we were running – she escaped the base, called us, and headed to Canada in escape. She met some other non-human eating vampires in Toronto, and they all headed north, where apparently another coven had formed. They had been trying to contact me for months, trying to save me from Giovanni – from the inevitable. When they realized through another clan of vampires that the 'Silver Eyes' (Indrani, Ayden, etc.) had recruited another member, they sent Lillian to check it out.

By the time the story ended, we were in a busy city, full of tall buildings and parks. It was Winnipeg, according to Lillian, a city in Manitoba (a Canadian province on the American border, just north of North Dakota).

I had run far. Apparently, we met on the Nunavut – Manitoba border.

We walked briskly for the rest of the way in a stupid attempt at being subtle. Like the local Canadian residents wouldn't notice two tall, pale, golden-eyed beauties walking through the cold city in no jackets.

Despite the obvious problems, we made it to wherever we were going without problem.

"We're using the side entrance, straight into the evidence room. I think it'll make more of a point," Lillian explained with a smile as we walked into a decrypt, brick walled alley. A gust of wind threw newspapers into the air all around us as thunder rattled the sky.

"Are we going to a police station or something?" I asked hesitantly.

"If only," Lillian responded, not smiling anymore.

We reached the end of the alleyway and came to what I thought was a dead end until Lillian turned left and I saw a space between two buildings.

The alleyway had stretched between a burnt out old fire station and a crappy little apartment complex in the lower district of the city. Wood planks boarded up the windows of both buildings. Another brick building, this time a factory facing the opposite street, was built behind the fire station and the complex, giving the alley the look of one big brick alcove, or an upside down letter U. I saw, though, that Lillian had discovered a little tunnel between the back wall of the factory and the back wall of the fire station that was only about a foot in width. The other end of the mini-alley was bricked up.

"And we're supposed to fit through there?" I asked in shock.

"But of course," she smirked.

She squeezed between the two buildings and I followed, pulling a dumpster back behind me to close off the little space. Lillian's orders. We continued shuffling down the narrow pathway until we came to about the middle, where a little window leading to a basement sat. The ground underneath the window had been sloped so that bigger bodies could go in and out of it. I saw no light inside.

Lillian did a complex tapping noise using both her nails and fists against the glass. A few seconds after she was done, someone opened the window from the other side, letting us crawl through.

It took me only a second to realize that the lights _were_ on inside, only black paper was taped against the window.

"Ow," I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

"Sorry about that," a smooth male voice chuckled.

I opened my eyes again to see Lillian rolling her eyes at me and a strong looking male vampire smiling at me kindly.

"You must be Bella Swan. I'm Nic, Nic Haerdon." The vampire, Nic, was tall and toned. He had short, straight-out-of-bed looking hair in a shade of milk chocolate, with the norm golden eyes and a welcoming smile. He looked, I decided, refreshingly normal.

We shook hands, and I was about to say hi when a voice from another room called out:

"Hey, Hard-On, get me a vial!"

I giggled in astonishment while Nic gave me a wry look and Lillian walked out of the room, muttering about immaturity.

The room was like a large storage closet, filled with boxes and items, all placed carefully in plastic Baggies. Three heavily padlocked doors led to different rooms in opposite directions of the window I had just come through.

Nic walked past me and locked the window before walking to a little mini-fridge and opening it.

"Blood?" he asked me casually.

"Uh, no thanks," I said, raising an eyebrow.

"I'll get you one just in case," he smiled. He pulled out five vials and walked to the door on the right. "Coming?"

"Oh, er, yeah," I hastened through it after him.

The next room looked like some rich frat kid's living room. There were five mismatched couches, some full of patches, all holding an assortment of pillows and facing a wall covered by several huge, flat screen TVs. There were no windows in the room, but to compensate, lots of pictures of different places and in different frames covered the walls.

It looked really comfy.

"'Bout time," complained a young looking vampire, lounged out on one of the couches. Then he saw me and sat bolt straight. "Hello there!"

"Hi."

"Max, this is Bella Swan. Bella, Max Roone." Nic then threw a vile at Max, who caught it without taking his eyes off of me.

He had long, surfer looking brown hair (a couple of shades darker than Nic's), with the same eyes and a slightly tanner looking shade of pale skin. Possibly Mediterranean.

"Did someone say _Bella Swan_?" A pretty and short Asian girl walked into the room from yet another door unbeknownst to me. She had black hair in two braids, one on each side of her head. Oddly, she wore thick, black-framed glasses over her golden eyes. She gaped when she saw me. "Holy _ess_."

Nic threw her a vial and she drained it in one gulp.

"Oh, good, you're all here. Cap wants to see us, plus _her_. In the boardroom. Now," demanded Lillian, having popped her head through the doorway Nic and I had just come through. She left as quickly as she had come.

"Cap?" I asked, overwhelmed.

"Er, the Head Hauncho," explained Max, looking slightly uncomfortable. I looked at Nic for an explanation, but he was guzzling a vial.

"Ready for one yet?" he asked when he was done.

I nodded quickly, feeling over my head and wishing now more than ever that my system could consume alcohol.

'Cause honestly?

"You don't happen to have any Hard Lemonade, do you?" I asked, after having downed the little glass of blood.

I could _really_ use one.


	4. A Little Taste of Redemption

Huge gap in update, sorry!!!!!!!!!

* * *

Chapter Three

_A Little Taste of Redemption_

"Um, no, sorry," was the only response I got. Plus some weird looks from Max.

"The Cap is cool, don't worry," he told me, smiling calmly.

"Yeah, totally," said the other vampire girl who's name I didn't know. By the look on her face, she was _definitely_ lying. "My name's Aia, by the way. Spelled A-I-A."

She smiled at me as if she had just answered some deep mystery of the universe. My eyes twitched while trying to repress rolling. Aia (which, in my opinion should've been spelled like EYE-_yuh_, like it was said) seemed a little pompous.

Nic stopped at several doorways on the way to wherever we were going to hold the door open for us. He grinned at me – _every time_.

Uh-oh.

"Anytime now," Lillian said, tapping her foot hurriedly and rolling her eyes. After several corridors, she was standing next to a darkly polished wood door in a hallway I'd not seen before – oddly, the dark brown door was the only one in the whole vicinity.

"Was this place _purposely_ built like Wonderland?" I asked Nic sarcastically from the side of my mouth. He snickered and put a finger up to his mouth as we entered the Cap's room.

I had oddly lost my nerves – that was, until we entered the room and the Cap was glaring at me angrily. Vampire hearing, I realized way too late. _Oops._

I gasped when I looked around the new room – it was _huge_. I saw now why it was the only door – the room was the length of the hall outside. And the whole space was occupied by the biggest table I'd ever seen in my life.

"Wow."

"That's the usual reaction," Aia smiled.

"Not that people come here often," the Cap grumbled, still glaring. He looked pretty elderly for a vampire – not in a wrinkly sort of way, but in an exhausted-shade-of-gold eye color and gray hair that hinted me in on the fact that he must've been old when he got turned in the first place.

"As long as they come back out, I'm okay," I giggled, suddenly nervous again. No one laughed.

"Have a seat at the other end of the table," the Cap gestured to the far side of the room.

I was able to walk it quickly, but I could tell that for humans, it would've taken several minutes. Max and Aia both joined me on the far end while Nic and Lillian sat on either side of the Cap on the opposite side.

"Are we purposely testing our hearing?" I muttered to no one imparticular.

"Yes," grinned Max in reply.

Sitting down, the 'Cap' began to speak:

"We have recently unearthed new information on the whereabouts of Giovanni's place of business. We have also uncovered a meeting route designated for fourteen-hundred," he started in a clear, monotone voice. I was confused already. "We are developing plans to interrupt the trade at _just_ the right time, and through that, possibly we could save another vampire. We might just have to deal with some of the wolf-eater guards-"

"Wait, woah, woah, woah!" I interrupted, eyes wide and hands raised. "They trade _vampires_? And the _wolf-eater guards_?"

"Yes, that is what I said. I believe you've met the latter and for the first statement, humans sell humans all the time! So close your mouth and _please_ do not interrupt me." The captain's voice was harsh and cruel and he said that all in the space of twenty seconds. I glared at him, rebuked into silence.

He continued on a longer, more boring tangent about base statistics, and I wondered idly why I was invited at all. No way was I invited to this 'rescue mission', nor would I want to go if it meant seeing Ayden and the rest of them again. Once was _more_ than enough.

But I was broken out of my reverie when I heard an all-too-familiar name…

"- And we suspect it might be the Cullen-"

"Cullen!" I shouted suddenly. "What about him?"

The Cap glared at me dangerously for several minutes, and strangely, I could feel my skin start to heat up. But regardless, he explained.

"They have a certain vampire, an Edward Cullen, in their custody. We are interested in him for the base, so we have planned our intersection carefully. I'm guessing it is true then, the rumors that you have been formerly affiliated with him?"

"Yes!" I breathed.

"Wait – I thought she couldn't remember her past?" exclaimed Aia in confusion, cutting me off.

"Only parts," I snapped at her, before turning back to the Cap. "We need to do this, then. _I_ need to."

"Well, of course. But you cannot come along. It would compromise the safety of our members if you went along on a recon-"

"We're _vampires_, okay? Not marines. We – _I _– can handle this," I growled angrily.

"We may be vampires, Isabella Swan, but so are they. Even monsters have murderers," he responded coldly.

An image of something Edward said to me, long ago, floated into my head without my consent. Something about monsters – about _him_ being a monster. I didn't respond to the Cap, but instead shut my lips and sat through the rest of the meeting without interruption.

But I would still go, I realized. Even if they didn't let me. I _would_ save Edward.

---

"Are you okay? You've been kind of quiet since the meeting," Nic asked me sometime later, when him, Max, Aia, and I were lounging about in the main living room with a couple of other vampires I didn't know.

The other vampires in the room kept shooting me strange looks, and it was as if I still got Goosebumps for a moment.

"Yeah. I'm fine," I lied, not meeting his eyes.

"Well, okay. I'm going to go get a vial. You want one?"

"No."

He sighed and got up, throwing Max a look that he must've thought I missed. When he left the room and the door swung shut behind him, Max turned toward me from his game of darts with another vampire.

"You know, he snaps at everyone. He just doesn't like being interrupted, the Cap," Max said, somewhat pleadingly.

"Of course," I replied with a phony smile.

"Well, actually, no one is usually stupid enough to interrupt him in the first place," called out Lillian from an opposite corner in the room, where she sat flipping through magazines.

Gee, thanks.

"If I recall correctly, _you_ did when you first got here, Lil," added Aia from the couch next to me. She looked up at me from her laptop and rolled her eyes playfully. I giggled. I suddenly liked her a lot more than I had earlier.

Lillian chose not to respond to that.

"So, Bella, when you said earlier today that you only forgot _some _parts of your past, what do you mean?" Max asked, trying to sound conversational, several minutes later.

"Um, just before I blacked out," I informed him, resting my head back on the couch and closing my eyes, hoping for peace (and Edward).

"Ah. Sooo, was that _a lot_…?"

"Shut _up_, Max," Lillian demanded rudely. I was oddly happy, though, that she had said that. I certainly didn't need questions right then, especially from someone like Max.

"Jeez, sorry! Just trying to make conversation!" Max tried to sound helpless, but he ended up throwing his hand out and flinging a dart at an unexpecting vampire. The dart hit its mark – right square in the center of the guy's back – but the metal tip just hit, bent, and fell to the floor.

The vampire who was hit turned around menacingly to glare at Max.

"Sorry, dude!"

Aia, yet again, rolled her eyes at me, and I wondered idly if that's how it looked when I did it.

_If it does_, I thought bitterly, _I am _never_ rolling my eyes again_.

Nic came in several minutes later with an extra vile, which he handed to me. I saw Lillian glaring at me from across the room.

Sighing, I yet again downed the bottle in one.

---

That night, Nic, Lillian, Cap, and some other vampire whom I had never seen before walked together through the living room and into another hallway, which I could see led to a door called "Armory".

"They're doing the mission _tonight_?" I hissed at Aia, wide eyed.

"Of course. When'd you think they were going to do it?" she asked airily, not looking up until seconds later. Then her voice was skeptical. "Not that it matters…"

"Oh, of course not. I was just surprised, that's all."

"Uh _huh_," she quipped, disbelieving.

Several minutes passed without them coming out and I could no longer take the tension.

"Where _are_ they? I wanted to see the weapons…" I whined, pretending to look at the clock.

Aia sighed somewhat angrily and shut her laptop with a loud _click_.

"There's a door in the Armory that leads to the streets. Now why, may I ask, do you care? And don't lie to me, Bella. I have a sense for that kind of thing!" she warned.

I was temporarily at a loss for words. How could I quickly and concisely _possibly_ sum up what Edward meant to me in just a few words?

"He's the love of my existence," I whispered to her, despair filling up my eyes.

Her tough exterior slipped off momentarily, and that's all I needed to see for conformation that she wouldn't call them and rat me out.

"Hey, where's she going?" I heard Max ask Aia from behind me as I ran out of the room.

I didn't hear Aia's answer – I was on a mission to save Edward.

And honestly? It was _about time_.

* * *

Thanks for reading! Reviews always appreciated! ;D


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